This is the studio project of one man: Dan Snaith returns under the name Caribou after losing “Manitoba” to Handsome Dick Manitoba’s vast empire of … uh, who knows. The result is an incredible mish-mash of slight pop tunes buried under beats, cool waves of white noise, and the less hirsute side of the Krautrock canon. The whole thing is a flowing mix that draws on the ubiquitous, but always pleasant, matching of Beach Boys harmonies with My Bloody Valentine aural aesthetics. Imagine an updated version of the first Cornelius record and toss in the latest M83 record — except this one has actual songs.
Added bonus for past and present drug users: The third track brings you in seven minutes to a place most people can’t go in ten years: the Other Side. There it provides enlightenment, and then returns. It’s all the fun of the psychedelic freakout, but you don’t have to wake up naked, bruised, and shoeless in the shrubs. Granted, Caribou doesn’t get into the psychological horrors and fingernails-in-the-walls type of stuff that sometimes accompanies such journeys, but it deals with the rapture of seeing the bright-colored lights pretty well.
